10 December 2009

Stop acting like a jerk (or like an enraged nerd?!) on drug test!

Yesterday, the story about a study published by Hong Kong's psychiatrists that "strongly criticised" the drug test scheme in school made it to the headline of SCMP. On the very same day, Legco's Establishment Subcommittee approved the establishment of two principal assistant secretaries and one personal secretary positions in the Narcotics Division of the Security Bureau. These establishments imply an additional salary cost of HK$2M+ per annum for the year of 2010-11.

Undersecretary for Security Lai Tung-kwok said that they were aware of the psychiatrists' position paper and welcomed views of different groups. He said that they needed some experience gain from the trial scheme "which will be valuable when extending the scheme to other districts".

It is clear. They're not listening. The professional views of the doctors are just some other views that do not matter.

And they told us that they need to learn from the trial scheme in Tai Po. We asked them here in July not to treat our kids as guinea pigs. I said the government simply didn't know what they were doing. The drug test will make the kids feel annoyed and pressured and will achieve very little in combating drug problem. And the thing that annoys me most is that they are trying to use our kids to test out their ill-found scheme. Unfortunately, we're not as influential as our enraged nerd friends in the blogsphere, so our views are probably not heard by many.

It is also clear that the Tai Po trial scheme is only a start. They're going to sacrifice the privacy and self-esteem of our kids in Tai Po to come up with a territory-wide school-based drug test. They're also talking about a compulsory drug test outside of school. The performance targets of one of the directorate posts established included not only the completion of the trial scheme in Tai Po, but also the consultation and proposal of compulsory drug testing at community level. We pay this person HK$1M+ a year to turn a deaf ear to our voices (including those from the medical profession) and work out a compulsory drug testing scheme for every Villagers. Junkies, watch out for that! Time to immigrate to Holland!

Our Honourable Legco members were also doing what they do best. It was reported that some of them were not sure about the establishments, but they nevertheless approved them. Thank you for your good job! When our kids come clean and become nerds like Martin Oei and Kay Lam because of the damage done, they're going to vote you into the Legco again when they reach 18!

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At the Libertines Pub, Hong Kong, you're invited to think otherwise. We are a bunch of rascals who got fed up with the herd mentality and would like to see you having the courage to think for yourself. Our sole objective is the liberation of your thinking through provocative, sometimes irritating, ridicule.